In the context of changing demographic, technological, economic conditions, of unplanned urbanization, of insufficient development, unrational use of natural resources, everywhere around the world, as well as in Romania, the consequences of natural disasters will be more and more serious for human civilization. This paper has as goal the presentation of methods and materials specific for surveying engineering that are in close connection with environmental engineering and have to be used for continuously monitoring areas affected by disasters. Although sometimes the surveyor’s contribution to certain projects for disaster risk management, meant to develop early-warning-systems or risk maps, is not adequately appreciated, as he is only seen as supplier of measured geometric data, the surveyor has a significant contribution, through his abilities regarding modeling of dynamic systems like construction or slopes and GIS data interpretation. For all these reasons, the old view must be put aside, and the novel element of this paper is brought by underlining the important role that the surveyor has in monitoring the earth surface prone to natural disasters. By means of presenting state of the art technologies, like remote sensing, satellite-based positioning or GIS, the paper shows its high level of topicality. Moreover, the paper’s originality is given by the proposal that the surveyor should always take part in reaching decisions regarding courses of action in disaster risk management. The methods and instruments presented in this paper indicate the stage researches have reached, they are diverse and cover a wide area, making possible even the monitoring of the entire planet. These are geodetic engineering, satellite-based positioning, photogrammetry and remote sensing, GIS and geoinformatics and land management. Although varied and very elaborate, these methods have limits, namely they only help monitoring, anticipating and reconstructing after disasters, but they cannot be used to avoid such calamities from taking place. The importance of this paper also lies in stressing the importance of the surveying profession and the practical applications it has in disaster risk management, thus contributing to achieving sustainable development.

sustainable development; surveying; disaster risk management; monitoring; GIS; disaster.

Presentation: oral